


Secret Sacred

by navaan



Category: The Thorn Boy - Storm Constantine
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Sexual Content, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arod had never expected to meet that one young man from the temple again. And now maybe Darien is more than a memory, but a new beginning for both of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret Sacred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akshi/gifts).



The first time I saw him he had been nothing more to me than a feverish dream sent to me by Challis Hespereth in the sanctum of Phasmagore; a delicious memory that had no place outside the temple walls and that I'd never spoken of to anyone since then as the goddess required of her faithful worshippers. 

I had expected to never see him again, but my dreams had never allowed me to entirely forget our passionate meeting in the sanctum. Back then I had been sure that a vision of Lesarel had come to me to give me what I most desired from him and I'd been overwhelmed by anger, lust and my darkest desires, my mind clouded with the drugs administered by the priestesses, and I had possessed him in way I wouldn't have dared to without the feverish haze of abandon that was the blessing of Challis Hespereth in that most secret place that was only open to those who were young and beautiful. 

The second time I had laid eyes on Darien had been at the market well and he had recognized me just as I had recognized him. Darien too had been haunted by the sacred secret of our devout union, and so, like a mysterious lover from a past I'd never lived, he had returned into my life and was now a part of it that I didn't want to live without. We never talked of our fist meeting in the Shrine of Bestowing and never questioned the fate that had brought us back together. The ways of the goddess were as always hard to understand.

He visited me in my workshop when he could slip away from the monastery where he was a servant, but apart from these visits he might just as well still be nothing but a memory, for I still knew nothing about him and his life before he came up to me again at the well. He'd never met any of my friends or family and never met with me when I was in company, like a ghost, slipping away when the haunting hour had passed.

“My beautiful ghost,” I whispered and stroked my hand through his hair, kissed along his jaw and gripped his hips a little tighter. We were lying on a stack of cushions and blankets, haphazardly staked up in the middle of my workshop to form a temporary bed for our lovemaking, half finished sculptures looking down on us as we were caught up in carnal pleasures.

“Don't say that,” he said, out of breath, slowly spearing himself on me with a skill that betrayed experience, but so different from our usual frantic, nearly violent lovemaking. “I was a ghost for too long. I'm alive with you.”

He kissed me then, giving himself and taking control at once, and I lost myself in the sensation of his soft and pliant body fitting against mine perfectly.

Afterwards I held him and he allowed it, for once not hurrying to get back to the monastery before somebody knew he'd gone. Not for the first time I asked myself what circumstance had led him to serve in the kitchens. I wanted to tell him about Lesarel and how my desire for him had hurt me. Instead I pulled up his head, roughly, and kissed him.

He pushed against me with one arm, not yielding to my show of dominance and instead pushed me downwards and pulled at my hair, moving my head to his thickening sex. I could still smell myself on him, my sent all over his body, mingled with his own. I wanted nothing more than to hear his sweet cries of pleasure again, to make him writhe in pleasure and hurting with desire. I slipped him between my lips, swallowed him down and was rewarded with the sigh of my name.

Later I watched him walk through the room, wrapped up in nothing but a blanket, graceful and beautiful. He touched one of my statues, a warrior in arms, his features not yet completely finished, his fingers delicate against the stone. “You weren't always a servant,” I said, before I could stop myself, but it was so painfully obvious with the way he moved and talked, that he'd come from a different life, a different sphere of being.

“You are an amazing artist,” he whispered back. He moved to the table where some of my designs for future projects were lying. His eyes fell on one in particular and a smile graced his features. I knew which one he was looking at, but truly he could have been looking at any of my recent drawings, because for some time all my designs had taken on his likeness.

_ _

“I think you're keeping a secret, ” Elyssah told me the next morning. My sister had come to me to make sure I was in good health and hadn't shut myself away again to drown myself in work. She too was looking at my designs and had spotted the newest theme of all of my art. “I'm glad you are finally moving on, Arod. It's been over a year.”

“Over a year since the person I loved betrayed me to be with our own father? I do remember.”

“And you've been haunting this workshop like a raging wraith ever since. I'm happy to know you've find some new...” She paused, struggling to find the words.

“Some new object of obsession?”

“Desire, perhaps,” Elyssah conceded. “I've never met him. How would I judge whether love is part of it?”

“It is.”

“Then why have I not met him?”

It was a fair question and I couldn't be mad at her for asking it. We had always been close and I had rarely kept something from her in our youth. “I'm not keeping him from you,” I said, trying to reassure. “But he and I we share something. An understanding maybe, that some things are better left between lovers.”

Elyssah, with her dark hair and dark eyes, looked at me with sorrow. “Father speaks of disinheriting you.”

“Good then, that I don't have a father.” A jibe about Lesarel was at the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it down and tried to think of Darien, who soothed my passions, when at the same time he was driving them on.

“You know if you stay here the memories will always come back to haunt you, brother. You could go and make a new life for yourself somewhere else, away from father's watchful gaze and the constant evidence of Lesarel's betrayal.”

“I will not simply run away.”

“Maybe if you truly have found love again, you will think the better of it.”

_ _

I made him sit for me, making sketches of his limbs and eyes. The candle light made him look more fragile and sad than I had ever seen him. Usually, with me, he was the picture of vivacious life, and the prospect that there was a deeper sadness beneath his beautiful, vibrant surface scared me a little. He was my perfect vision, the fire that had come to burn away my own sadness.

“If I asked you to run away with me, would you come?” I asked him.

“Run away to where?” he asked, cautious not to give me an answer.

I shrugged as I worked on, giving detail to his hair. “There is work for artist outside of Tarnax. The old capital has become the city of artists. We could go there.”

His eyes were as unreadable as always, but then he blinked as if he was shaking of a memory and looked at me with interest then. “And what would I do there? I'm not an artist.”

“Darien,” I said. “I'm sure you could do whatever you set your mind to. You try to hide it, but you have some education. And I think...”

He smiled, but it was sad again. “You think I can leave and make a better life for me than the life I have here as a lowly servant. But life isn't always as easy. This is already my second chance. I can't simply leave. I'm here by the mercy of powerful people, Arod. I should be thankful.”

Questions sprung up in my mind. I wanted to know more, wanted to know more of him, but when he looked at me sadly I stopped myself. “Are you?” I asked instead.

“I'm here with you. And I think that's what was supposed to happen. I'm grateful for that.” It was the closest he had ever come to admitting that our meeting again could be a sign of the mysterious fates the goddess held in store for all of us. “I was destroyed once, by my own making. That's why I'm here. I learned that betraying sacred secrets can lead to your doom. So let my past be a secret best forgotten and instead lets enjoy the love we have now.”

“Enigma,” I said, but smiled. “You're a riddle I'll spent my whole life solving.”

He laughed at that and stood up. “You'll find I'm quite simple.” Then he walked up to me and put his arms around my waist, pressing himself against my body. I returned the embrace immediately and kissed the top of his head. “Did you mean it?” he asked. “Do you _want_ to spend your whole life solving this riddle? Won't you be bored?”

“I can be a jealous lover. I can be selfish. Sometimes I'll put my art and craft above even myself. I can be possessive and irrational. But I'll accept your secrets. We already share a secret of our own.”

“We can never speak of it, Arod,” he said desperately. “Never, never speak of it.”

The desperation in his voice touched my heart and I realized what I really wanted was to see him happy; it didn't matter where. I stroked his hair to sooth him. “This will be the only time we ever spoke of it. Lets share the burden of this mystery and never speak of it again, apart from in the way our eyes look upon each other and our bodies fit together in the throws of passion.” I smiled. “This is how it's supposed to be.”

“How very devout,” he said and finally looked up. “Lets keep our secret then.” And he kissed me. I felt that this could truly be forever.

His hand touched my chest and I could see the first hints of desire in his exquisite eyes and an answering hotness in my loins. “You are well built for an artist.”

“Working stone is not an easy task,” I told him, took his hand by the wrist, strongly but careful not to bruise him, and guided it slowly lower, my other hand slipping beneath his tunic and settling at his hip. “But I was meant to be a soldier. I chose to be an artist instead.”

“You are a wonderful artist.” Darien looked up and searched my face, surprised and cautious. Before we had never spoken of my past more than we had spoken of his. “Thank you for telling me,” he whispered and sank to his knees, his fingers already working my belt loose.

_ _

A year passed quickly and Darien was still living and working in the monastery, but more and more often he was staying in my bed, losing his kittenish fear of being caught or reprimanded. It seemed to me that no one really cared whether he came or went as long as he did his chores. I had found out that the monks were not giving him any hard work and in truth he didn't have much to do.

“I was in their care for a long time,” he admitted one day. “I was gravely ill. Maybe everyone has forgotten about me by now. One day maybe I can forget too.” 

“When you forget whatever haunts you, will you come away with me then?”

He smiled sadly, probably still not sure whether the day would truly ever come for him. I stayed true to my promise and never asked.

Then King Alofel died and the streets where full of gossip and whispered rumors. He had been young still. His death would leave a child on the throne and people expected the prince's mother, the foreigner queen, would use the child king to reign in his name. Talk of murder and strange illnesses made their way around Tarnax. Elyssah related some of it to us, when she came to visit. Darien listened to her story and then said: “She would never have killed him. Queen Mallory loved the king, like...” He stopped. “Everybody.”

We both looked upon him strangely then and he shook his head at me, indicating that he would have no answers for me. 

“Some say he has been ill for years,” my sister admitted. “But who will ever know the truth?”

“There will be parade for the new king, Ashoel. We could go.”

Darien was reluctant, but finally promised to come with us. I was glad to see he was getting along with my lovely Elyssah as if she were his sister, too. They were the most important people in my life, my only family and I loved to see them happily gossip together.

But now it was like a shadow had fallen over my lover's fair face.

_ _

It was hard to see beyond the crowd of people, who had come from all over the kingdom to greet the new, young king in Tarnax. People were cheering and Darien was clinging to my hand, as if he feared he would get lost. Elyssah and her husband had taken us in their carriage, but only after Darien had made sure again that he was allowed to go. Even now he was nervous and looked around him, as if he expected people to mean us harm – or maybe to recognize him.

But nobody even looked our way.

At one point my sister reached for my other hand and stood on her tiptoes to whisper in my ear. “There's Lesarel.” When I looked up I met his icy gaze, but his eyes slid towards the hand that was still holding Darien's. Darien looked to me, a question in his eyes, then back at the man who to him was nothing but a stranger, whom he had heard word of only rarely. He knew the important, most devastating parts of the story of my ill-fated love, but had never pried and never asked to hear more of it, sharing my sadness as if he had experienced all of my pain himself. 

Then the cheering grew louder and the moment was broken.

But once more I was reminded of my sisters wise counsel: It would be better to just leave all of this behind and build a new life somewhere else.

Wonderfully adorned horses passed us, guards with shiny weapons and then a carriage, adorned with golden ornaments and flowers that I had never seen before. All of it looked like a picture from a story book. We were close enough to touch, to smell the horses. A young boy, maybe eleven years of age, now our king, sat in the middle of his own magnificent carriage, his face stony as befitted a ruler, but so terribly young that the expression seemed painfully out of place. He waved at the crowd with one hand. Beside him sat a tall, richly adorned blonde woman. She too wore a crown.

Darien gasped when he saw her, shrinking back a little as if he was afraid of her. His grip on my hand was tightening and when I looked over at him he was pale, as if he'd been scared to death.

It was impossible to think that she would see us in this sea of colourfully clad and cheering people, but suddenly Darien stiffened and when I looked up, I saw her eyes fixed on us. As if in a dream the moment dragged on. Then Queen Mallory smiled and inclined her head, as if she was meeting the crowd, but Darien reacted to it with a smile of his own, uneasy and relieved all at once.

Worried I pulled him along, away from the parade, away from the crowd. Around us people were grumbling. My sister was calling my name. But I could only think to get Darien away from it all.

We found a peaceful place a few streets away. Questions were again springing up like from a well and I wanted to ask all of them, but the most important one was foremost on my mind: “The queen... Did she...? She recognized you.”

“Yes,” Darien whispered. When he looked up, he didn't look scared any more. His smile was bright and happy, touching his eyes and all further questions remained stuck in my throat, the uneasy feeling in my stomach disappeared. “Arod, my past is over now. Lets leave the old ghosts behind and run away together.”

A happiness took hold of me like I hadn't felt in a long time, maybe not since before fate had brought me back my lover from the temple. I didn't want explanations, did not want to know about the queen, who had scared him so, or about his life before me. It wasn't important what cruel fate had led him here to me, or which trial Challis Hespereth had put both of us through. Only one thing was important now. I kissed him, held him hard against me, took him by the hand and pulled him along as we were running, both of us laughing, drawing the eyes of street folk upon us.

But only we shared a sacred secret.


End file.
